What a Logo Should Actually Cost (And Why the Range Is So Wide)
Logo quotes range from $5 to $50,000 for what looks like the same deliverable. Here is what actually drives the price, and how to work out which end of the range you need.
Packaging Dielines: What Your Printer Actually Needs
Most packaging delays are file problems, not design problems. Here is what a print-ready packaging file contains and the mistakes that send it back.
Packaging projects rarely run late because the design took too long. They run late because the file went to the printer, came back, and the cycle repeated three times.
Almost all of it is avoidable, and almost all of it is decided before design starts.
Get the dieline first
The dieline is the flat template: the cut lines, the fold lines, the glue tabs, the safety margins. It comes from your printer or converter, and it is specific to their tooling.
Designing before you have it means redrawing later. This is the most expensive and most common mistake in packaging work, and it is entirely preventable by sending one email at the start.
Ask your printer for:
- The dieline as vector artwork, not a PDF preview
- Bleed requirement, usually 3mm but confirm
- Safety margin — how far from the trim and folds artwork must stay
- Colour space, and whether they want CMYK, Pantone, or both
- Total ink limit
- Minimum line weight and minimum type size they can hold
- How they want special finishes supplied
What a print-ready file contains
The dieline on its own layer, named clearly, set to overprint, and marked as non-printing. It should never be flattened into the artwork.
Bleed on every trimmed edge. Background colour and imagery extend past the trim line by the specified amount. Artwork that stops exactly at the trim will show a white sliver when cutting drifts, and cutting always drifts.
Nothing critical in the safety margin. Text and logos pulled well inside. This matters most near folds, where a millimetre of movement turns a crisp edge into a broken one.
Fonts outlined, or supplied. Outlining is safest. If you outline, keep a live-text version for future edits or you will be retyping the ingredients panel.
Images at adequate resolution at final size — usually 300ppi at 100%. A logo that looks fine on screen can be a placed raster at 72ppi.
Correct colour mode. CMYK for process, spot colours named exactly as your printer expects. An RGB image left in the file will be converted by someone, and the result will not be your brand colour.
Special finishes as separate spot layers. Foil, spot UV, emboss and die-cuts each go on their own named layer as a 100% spot colour set to overprint. Never as an effect in the artwork.
The mistakes that send files back
Artwork built to a preview rather than a true dieline. It looks right and does not fit.
Missing bleed on one panel. Usually the one that got added last.
Type below the printer’s minimum. Small print on the regulatory panel is where this happens — 4pt looks fine on screen and fills in on press.
Rich black where it should be plain. Small text in four-colour black registers badly. Fine text should be 100% K.
Barcodes scaled or recoloured. A barcode needs its quiet zone, adequate contrast and its magnification within tolerance. A barcode that does not scan means the run is scrap.
Transparency effects left live. Drop shadows and blends can flatten unpredictably. Ask your printer whether they want them flattened.
Layers left on that were meant to be hidden — the “old version” layer that prints.
The regulatory panel
Whatever your market requires — ingredients, nutrition, warnings, recycling marks, importer details, country of origin — needs designing in from the start rather than squeezed in at the end.
Worth being clear about the split: a designer lays those panels out to the specification you supply, at the sizes your regulations demand. Verifying that the content itself is correct and compliant for your market is yours or your compliance advisor’s, not the designer’s. Getting that boundary agreed early avoids an uncomfortable conversation later.
Before you sign off
- Does the artwork sit on your printer’s actual dieline?
- Does the bleed extend past every trimmed edge?
- Is anything important within the safety margin?
- Are fonts outlined or supplied?
- Are images 300ppi at final size?
- Is the colour mode right, and are spots named as the printer expects?
- Does the barcode scan from a print at final size?
- Have finishes been supplied as separate spot layers?
- Has a native speaker proofread every panel?
- Have you seen a physical proof?
That last one is not optional for a first run. Screens lie about colour, and folding artwork behaves differently in your hand than in a mockup.
We supply packaging artwork on your printer’s dieline with the finish layers set up as they expect — see packaging design, and the print-versus-screen piece for the design side of the same problem.